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Two years of larval life, and the subject of our sketch is lost to the sight of the rural folks. A new life, where feeding is no longer necessary, awaits him, but one in which the most radical changes must occur if he is to fulfil the existence which nature designed in her grand scheme of creation. From a silk-gland, which, unlike those of the butterflies and moths, is situated at the end of the body, he spins a cocoon, but there being so little of silk to spare, he needs must supply the deficiency by the utilization of a quantity of sand, which he glues into the walls of his house. Here he dwells a comparatively inactive pupa for three brief weeks, retaining his large, powerful mandibles to the last, which he uses in cutting his way out of the cocoon, when he is ready to emerge as a winged neuropter. In the adult form he resembles the dragon-flies in flight, flapping wildly and irregularly about, as if his muscles were too weak to wield his great stretch of wings. But in repose his alar appendages are folded above each other, forming an acute-angled roof above the long, slender abdomen. The antennæ or feelers are short, stout and club-shaped, and the wings long, narrow and densely veined.